THE firefighter initially in charge of the response to the Grenfell Tower blaze revealed today that he had received no training in evacuating tall buildings with a “stay-put” policy.

Michael Downden, a watch manager at North Kensington with 15 years’ service in the London Fire Brigade (LFB), told the inquiry into the disaster that he had received no training on “how to re-evaluate the advice offered” to residents during an incident.

Advice to stay put is based on the premise that a fire in a high-rise building can be contained within the flat where it broke out, but expert evidence presented to the inquiry indicates that the policy had failed within about half an hour of the fire starting.

Richard Millett QC, lead counsel to the inquiry, went through Mr Downden’s training logs, which listed him as having run training sessions on high-rise firefighting.

But Mr Downden conceded that there was “no-one really supervising what the content was” and that his training sessions were audited only occasionally.

Asked how he could know his training was effective, he replied: “I suppose the only way I could really do that is to see how they apply themselves on the fireground.”

Mr Millett asked: “Leaving it to the fireground of an actual incident? Might that not be a bit late?” Mr Downden agreed.

The initial incident commander also said that he could not recall receiving any training in when “a partial or full evacuation strategy might become necessary” where a stay-put policy is normally in place, or in how to evacuate residents with mobility difficulties from high-rise buildings.

In his written statement to the inquiry, Mr Downden said firefighters were initially “really aggressive” with the Grenfell blaze, but that, “after about 20 minutes, I could see that something had failed, to make the fire react as it did.

“When I saw Grenfell Tower behaving like this, I was quickly outside my comfort zone and was trying to make decisions that I have not made before.

“Although I have previous experience in high-rise firefighting, I have never seen a fire behave in this way. It was totally unprecedented.”

He added: “I am not aware of any other way we could have dealt with this situation. We all did what we could and we acted as fast as possible.”

Mr Downden continues his evidence tomorrow.